Our customer was looking for a Penn State Nittany Lions neon sign as a gift for both of her sons which are currently enrolled at Penn State. She wanted a neon sign that was made locally so she didn’t have to worry about the sign breaking during shipment and could be repaired if anything happened to them. We worked with her to create a three foot neon Nittany Lions logo pattern with an oval background instead of a normal square background or a wire frame like most signs are created. From there, we bent the neon to create two identical logos in White for the lion and cobalt blue for the oval. We decided on cobalt blue to match the actual logo as closely as possible. At first we had decided on 10mm glass, but after creating the pattern, we wanted to give the sign a more filled look since the sign was bigger. We ended up going with 12mm glass which had more luminescence and bigger tubes to showcase the logo design. After we bent the neon, we had to build the boxes. The boxes were made in black cintra to create the neon glow on the background, and to provide a background that doesnt fade or crack over time. Once the face of background was made, we needed to stiffen the background, so it didnt flex the neon during transport and hanging. We accomplished this by building a box behind the background. This box served a many purposes including stiffening the background, providing an area to internally mount the transformer, and providing an area to hide the wires from the front of the face. Once the background was built, we were able to build the signs. The customer centered the signs on the walls, and created cut outs to hide the transformer wiring and provide a clean, “floating” look to the signs.
